


Dining Hall

by cxr



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-17
Updated: 2013-06-17
Packaged: 2017-12-15 06:01:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/846126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cxr/pseuds/cxr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because an overseas Singaporean must write about food.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dining Hall

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written in July 2012

Their dining hall has twelve types of tea

in many colours

mint, red, black, green, herbal

none of them the Japanese green

that I moved in and out of the water

five times,

amidst the creation of scandalous relationships, real or imagined,

we termed "national issues" as we jiak zhua-ed in the office back home [1]

 

The mint tea is liquid chewing gum.

 

I take bigger scoops at the broccoli tray-

you'd think they were measuring emeralds back home.

I do a double take at the kangkong without sambal

only to realize that it is boiled spinach.

I snag a big, round cookie

that'd cost half a meal in Singapore,

maximising the value of the buffet spread.

 

There is no chilli sauce.

 

I decide to be adventurous.

I sit opposite someone I half-know

and his friend, whom I don't.

Their chatter is Korean, but

It is not so different from rapid exchanges in an unfamiliar accent,

or discussions about people or concepts I don't know.

It is "something important", they apologize,

after fifteen minutes.

 

This is home, then. Or not.

  


* * *

[1] Jiak zhua- literally "eating snakes". Here, it refers to slacking off.


End file.
